Objective: The aim of this work was to investigate the mechanism by which long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) WTAPP1 promotes the malignant progression of laryngeal cancer.
Patients and methods: In this study, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) examined the expression of lncRNA WTAPP1 in 49 pairs of tumor tissue specimens and paracancerous normal ones collected from laryngeal cancer patients. Subsequently, in the laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma cell lines AMC-HN-8 and Hep-2, WTAPP1 overexpression and knockdown vectors were constructed using lentivirus, and cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), cell colony formation and 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) assays were carried out to analyze the impact of lncRNA WTAPP1 on the function of laryngeal cancer cells. Finally, Luciferase reporting assay and recovery experiments were carried out to further explore whether lncRNA WTAPP1 has an impact on the malignant progression of laryngeal cancer via modulating microRNA-592.
Results: QRT-PCR results revealed a significantly higher expression of lncRNA WTAPP1 in tumor tissues of patients with laryngeal cancer than that in adjacent normal ones. Compared with patients with low expression of WTAPP1, those with higher expression had a more advanced pathological stage. Meanwhile, the proliferation ability of cells in sh-WTAPP1 group was remarkably attenuated when compared with that in sh-NC group. In addition, microRNA-592 and WTAPP1 mRNA levels were found negatively correlated in laryngeal carcinoma tissue specimens. Luciferase reporter gene assay indicated that WTAPP1 can be targeted by microRNA-592 through certain binding sites. Moreover, we demonstrated through some recovery experiments that WTAPP1 can indeed serve as an oncogene accelerating the malignant progression of laryngeal cancer through the modulation of microRNA-592.
Conclusions: LncRNA WTAPP was markedly highly expressed both in laryngeal carcinoma tissues and cell lines, which was also found to be closely relevant to the pathological stage of laryngeal cancer patients. Additionally, lncRNA WTAPP1 is able to enhance the proliferation capacity of laryngeal carcinoma cells via regulating microRNA-592.